'John Tognolini has been a rare voice and witness for justice in Australia, chronicling the struggles of Indigenous Australians and veterans and the deceptions of power from behind the facades of a society that prefers not to know. I salute him.'
John Pilger

In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive" bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, &...

Pageviews last month

Saturday, February 14, 2009

New Labour encouraged every aspect of this avarice by Mark Steel

Mark Steel

The people who couldn't see what was obvious are allowed to carry on.

The real point about a minister saying this is the worst economic crisis for 100 years, is it shows they haven't got a clue. That figure was plucked out of nowhere, unless there was a really dreadful crisis in 1909 that no one ever noticed before. Maybe the minister's just seen Mary Poppins, and the scene where the bank goes bust, he thinks is footage of a real financial crash.

So his next statement to Parliament will be "In order to steady the financial markets we are proposing tuppence tuppence tuppence a bag, feed the birds, tuppence a bag. THAT is the sound economic sense that can rescue our banks, rather than the ill-thought-out soundbites from the party opposite."

Why not say it's the worst for 2,000 years, when the great crash of 9AD was caused by the gross overvaluation of aqueducts? Or the worst for 65 million years, when the Jurassic currency disaster led to bankers throwing themselves from the top of brontosaureses, followed by the eventual disappearance of all dinosaurs, despite the Prime Minister having boasted: "We have finally put an end to the cycle of evolution and extinction."

Next week a minister will announce that the Bank of England has revised its forecasts, and instead of the crisis getting as bad as diarrhoea, as it first thought, it now expects it could be as bad as gastroenteritis, and the IMF believe it could even reach the point where it's like one of those days when it's coming out of both ends at once. But with careful fiscal handling this should be easing by the last quarter of 2010.

You have to admire the front of these ministers for saying anything at all about what's happening, given they insisted for years there would never ever again ever be a cycle of boom and bust.

Similarly an army of experts assured us on a daily basis that this boom couldn't possibly crash like previous booms because this boom was still going on whereas all previous ones had ended, and previous booms were founded on a manic belief that wealth could go up and up without any basis in reality, whereas this one was built on the sound footing that everything really is somehow suddenly worth twice as much so TAKE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN RIGHT NOW IT CAN'T EVER STOP!!!

For example, one of the bankers questioned yesterday said it was "not possible to envisage" the banking crash. But in every office, every pub, every launderette, there were people who managed to envisage exactly that. If Gordon Brown had got them to write his chancellor's speech, so that it went: "The bubble's got to burst sometime. I mean, you can't base an economy on pretending everything's doubled in value, and who's going to pay for these bankers' bonuses – WE are, that's who. I commend this budget to the House," he might not be in his present trouble.

Instead the people who couldn't possibly envisage what was obvious are allowed to carry on. To be fair, ministers have expressed their annoyance at the bankers' bonus system, so presumably there will now be a series of adverts in which a furtive banker buys a boat, while the camera zooms in to his sweaty face and a voice says: "Banking cheats – we're closing in."

One answer may be a review of how this bonus system came about. As if the Government's making out it's only just heard about it and they're as outraged as everyone else. Maybe Brown will make a statement to the nation in which he says: "HOW much do they pay themselves? Well no WONDER we're in a pickle, you just wait 'til I get my hands on them."

But New Labour urged and encouraged every aspect of this corporate avarice. It was defined from the beginning by characters like Mandelson making speeches such as: "In the modern Labour Party we are relaxed about those who express an insatiable and pathological desire for self-enrichment at the expense of our fellow man that borders on the truly evil."

They grovelled to every banker, and now they want to set up a review to see how that happened. If only Karen Matthews had thought about it, she could have said: "Instead of going to jail, why don't I set up a review to see how I kidnapped my own daughter," and got herself six months' work.

No comments:

John Tognolini's YouTube Channel

Follow by Email

Search Togs's Place.Com

Follow me on Twitter

John/Togs Tognolini

"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction." Graham Greene

Guests I've had on Radio.

Russell Crowe, Amanda Dole and myself outside Radio Redfern, May Day 1989. Russell had just performed a few songs on my show, Radio Solidarity. Amanda is an organiser for the National Union of Workers.

Recent Posts

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: Powered by FeedBurner

Green Left Weekly

Navigating Togs's Place.Com

Togs's Place.Com is a massive blog/web site. To get around and find articles you want or just explore, use the SEARCH BLOG, if you enter Noam Chomsky, you'll not only come up with numerous articles, speeches, interviews by and with Chomsky, but also being referred to in articles by Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Naomi Kline and myself. With Blogger you've got to scroll down from the most recent till the oldest. Every posting has a label ie, New Romans;Middle East from May 18 07 to today, this is a new system I've adopted for labels, previous labels on this topic were New Romans;Middle East 4, 3, 2, 1. These numbers go backwards to when I started this site in October 2006. New Romans;Middle East from May 18 07 to today will relabeled New Romans;Middle East from May 18 to June 10 07 for easy reference and the new label will be New Romans;Middle East from June 10 07 to today. The Recent Posts is the quick link to my Recent Postings. The Links can take you to 170 different web sites in Australia and around the World.

It's been a learning experience for me operating this blog but there is an insatiable hunger for alternative news and opinion on a range of issues in Australia that is often ignored or sidelined by the corporate media and an increasing self censored and Murdoch managed ABC.

Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney

"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91

"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life

"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

"Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard You met George Bush and the Pope too, I understand, Oh I liked the Pope much better, I only had to kiss his hand." L’Amour Denis Kevans 1939-2005

"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn

"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940

"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990

I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy